02 December 2007

Ancient Carthage and her Gods

I have started reading Gustave Flaubert's Salammbo available free at Project Gutenberg. It is a lot of fun, though it can not be taken as seriously as the author wished as a work of historical research. Nonetheless, Flaubert's creative imagination is at a white hot peak when he wrote this. Consider a brief scene involving the fearsome general Hamilcar Barca as he visits a temple on his return to Carthage. It is rare for an author of historical fiction to attempt to delve into the mind of a pagan fanatic, and even rarer to pull it off. See what you think.

[The chamber] was softly lighted by means of delicate black discs let into thewall and as transparent as glass. Between the rows of these equal discs,holes, like those for the urns in columbaria, were hollowed out. Each ofthem contained a round dark stone, which appeared to be very heavy.Only people of superior understanding honoured these abaddirs, which hadfallen from the moon. By their fall they denoted the stars, the sky, andfire; by their colour dark night, and by their density the cohesion ofterrestrial things. A stifling atmosphere filled this mystic place. Theround stones lying in the niches were whitened somewhat with sea-sandwhich the wind had no doubt driven through the door. Hamilcar countedthem one after another with the tip of his finger; then he hid his facein a saffron-coloured veil, and, falling on his knees, stretched himselfon the ground with both arms extended.

The daylight outside was beginning to strike on the folding shuttersof black lattice-work. Arborescences, hillocks, eddies, and ill-definedanimals appeared in their diaphanous thickness; and the light cameterrifying and yet peaceful as it must be behind the sun in the dullspaces of future creations. He strove to banish from his thoughts allforms, and all symbols and appellations of the gods, that he might thebetter apprehend the immutable spirit which outward appearances tookaway. Something of the planetary vitalities penetrated him, and he feltwithal a wiser and more intimate scorn of death and of every accident.When he rose he was filled with serene fearlessness and was proofagainst pity or dread, and as his chest was choking he went to the topof the tower which overlooked Carthage.